Dem
47
GOP
53
ActBlue is a nonprofit one-stop-shopping site for Democrats who want to donate to candidates. It has processed over $17 billion in donations since its founding in 2004. For years, Republicans had no counterpart, probably because they are suspicious of nonprofits. Finally, in 2019, the Republicans created WinRed, a for-profit company to process donations to Republican candidates. That sort of evened the score, though the Republicans are still playing catch-up.
WinRed processed $1.8 billion in 2024 for 5,000 campaigns, from junior deputy assistant dogcatcher for the town of East Cupcake to president. Since it takes 4% of all donations for itself, it earned $72 million gross that year. Of course, it needs personnel, servers, Internet connections, and has to pay the credit card companies a fee, but still, it is a nice business to be in with a gross of $72 million. Not surprisingly, somebody else got the idea and wanted a piece of the action and created a competitor to WinRed. It is called Impact and is led by a former Trump aide, Alex Bruesewitz. Impact and WinRed will now clash over collecting money for Republicans. One could imagine (dream of?) ads on Fox News from one of these companies urging viewers to use them instead of the other guys. On the other hand, what could Impact's competitive advantage be? Maybe taking a smaller cut of the take and sending more to the campaigns? Or claiming they don't trick you into secretly signing up for recurring donations like the other guys?
Impact is owned by a company called PublicSquare, which sells itself as a non-woke version of Amazon. PublicSquare has the financial backing of the Trumps and is a publicly traded corporation. Here is its stock price since 2023:
It is currently selling for a bargain price of $1.25. For the people who bought it for $21 on July 20, 2023, the day of the IPO, don't worry. It will come back, just as all the Trump-backed investments do.
How will the donation wars go? We don't know, but if WinRed and Impact both start running negative ads about the other one, it could have a... well, impact.
Oh, and so far, Trump is not available on Impact, but that could change. If he signs up with them as well, WinRed will not be real happy. But WinRed ought to know by now: It is not about you; it is about him. Especially when it's money FOR him. (V)